Rich Text

twister

twister

Howdy
Rich Text pisses me off. I hate it in mail, i hate it in Office and i hate it in TextEdit. I find it to be more of a pain in the butt than anything else. So i've turned it off.

And i was wondering what others think?

Like? Dislike? Useful? Pain in the butt?

Maybe i'm not using it right. What's the point?

Twister
 
Personally, I despise rich text in e-mails as well. I wish everyone would turn it off.
 
I find it to be the most effective when moving documents cross-platform. Plain text obviously doesn't have any formatting, so RTF is the next choice for cross-platform compatibility.

I despise HTML in email, since I frequently check my email from command line utilities, and hate seeing all of the stupid tags mixed in with the message.

I haven't gotten an RTF message in my inbox for a while, but I don't remember seeing garbage in with it.

So, twister, why do you hate it so much?
 
I hate it because when i copy something from a browser into Office (when writing a paper) it is it's own size and font and sometimes color. Same goes for emails. I like everything to look the same when writing papers and emails. I dont want fonts and colors and sizes to come along with the text i coppied. But what pushed me over was when i was editing a text file and it opened in TextEdit. I edited it and it wouldn't save it as plain text. It got mad at me. So i got mad at it. And turned off the rich text. I miss simple text. But hopefully now this will work like simple text did.

Just plain text. Nothing formatted unless I say so...please

Twister
 
Well, I guess some users might find it better to copy RTF from browsers to other documents, but I'm with you here. I usually go through BBEdit when copying stuff, where there's only PlainText anyway. But I'm a writer, and I *LOVE* RTF in TextEdit. It's my main word processing application now. I'd use BBEdit, but I need things like Italic and Bold sometimes.

E-Mail should be plain text, always. Nothing worse than HTML-Mail. RTF is basically fine, only that people abuse it. Having fonts at sizes under 9 and above 18 don't make sense to me for E-Mail. :)
 
I do not like it... if I open an HTML page with TextEdit... and forget to turn it off... we get a mess. same deal when I am playing with system files :) Like when I changed the name of the trash can in the dock. :(
 
for plain text files like HTML or system files, use the Terminal and vi or pico - or BBEdit, which also exists as a 'light' version. Very yummy.
 
I'm getting addicted to RTF in email -- because I like bold and italics and specifying things in color. Saying type man foo is a lot easier than saying type "man foo" at the prompt without the quotes.

I don't change font sizes, and use a generic font for email.

I can see how it might be annoying, but I use BBEdit as well, so I don't get the formatting when editing system files. And it still is very good for cross-platform documents. :)
 
I refuse to use Office (although I was forced to install it when my eployer bought it for me. I only use it for reading excel docs) So for typing school papers and stuff I use TextEdit. I think it's great to be able to put some colors and text sizes. If I am editing html then it's bbedit lite and if I'm coding c++ then it's project builder. I like everything to have it's own purpose :)
 
I think RTF is the most under-appreciated format there is. It can contain all sorts of attributes, and so many programs have support for it... but none of them use it as their default format. 'Tis a shame. Stupid .doc!
 
RTF in email is a blessing compared to HTML. RTF can't do linking, can't embed as many types of objects, and is designed around formatting documents. This makes it logically my choice for rich emails.

The issue of copying text from a browser and having its formatting copied is a bitch. You don't want to disallow the copying of formatting, because that would adversely affect copying in other applications, but text copied from the web probably shouldn't be formatted after its copied. My solution to this would be to have the browsers not put the formatting information on the pasteboard. Wether Omni or someone else will do this is another question though. What would be ideal would be to have an option in the prefs for this.

Don't dismiss RTF out of hand because you don't like the copy behavior of browsers, RTF has quite a bit of potential and power.
 
Originally posted by twister
I hate it because when i copy something from a browser into Office (when writing a paper) it is it's own size and font and sometimes color.
Click to expand...
That pissed me off too untill I found a solution. In Word: Edit -> Paste Special -> Paste as Plain Text

I've set up Shift+Apple+V as a macro to do this, so I don't have to use the menu each time (details of how to in the Office Help)

I like the ability to copy and paste styles, as it gives me the option to preserve formatting from web pages if I want to.

Bernie :eek:)
 
How do i turn off rich text in office? I can't seem to find it. thanks for the paste special idea though!

Twister
 
I don't think you can turn it off altogether. People who only want plain text would be far better off using textedit (set to use plain text format) or BBE Lite.

Bernie :eek:)
 
If you want SimpleText back for Mac OS X, then you can get it if you have the Developer's software. Email me if you want the Mac OS X version of SimpleText and I'll send it to you.
 
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